The present invention relates to mechanisms for managing devices that provide service to a client computer on a network, and in particular, to mechanisms for changing an operating state of a device depending on a positional relationship between each device and the client computer to manage devices.
In a typical office environment, business devices, such as printers, scanners, copiers, or facsimiles, are connected to a local area network. Individual network users can freely select one business device from among them and may use it via the local area network.
In most cases, multiple business devices are placed in an office. Several ideas focusing on a physical positional relationship between a user and a business device to improve business device utilization efficiency have been proposed.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 5-108283 describes a printer management apparatus enabling a printer that is as near as possible to an operator to be selected to print data. With such a management apparatus, when a print request signal is provided by a computer, issuing location determining means determines an issuing location on the basis of previously input location information on the computer. Optimal printer selecting means selects a printer that is nearest to the computer among currently available printers using the information on the locations of printers and the information from the issuing location determining means, and that printer prints print data supplied from the computer.
As a further example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 7-152510 describes an automatic printer selecting apparatus. The automatic printer selecting apparatus automatically selects a printer that is not in operation and that is near to a terminal to produce printed output from that printer.